


Soot and Starlight

by bixgirl1



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (Really just a lot of sex here), Anal Sex, Angst, Aziraphale's pretty much done waiting before the week is out, Biblical References, Crowley's a bit of a wreck after waiting for six thousand years, First Time, Genderfluid/Nonbinary (but mostly male-presenting) Crowley, HEA, Historical References, M/M, Oral Sex, Pining, Seriously this is so self-indulgent, Virgin Crowley, Wing Kink, Wings, and no I do not apologise, brief mention of switching, implied praise kink, service top Crowley, wanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:13:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21536521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bixgirl1/pseuds/bixgirl1
Summary: A week into the world without an expiration date, Aziraphale unfurls his wings.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 112
Kudos: 957





	Soot and Starlight

**Author's Note:**

> Yep. I'm in it now. *side-eyes everyone*

A week into the world without an expiration date, Aziraphale unfurls his wings. 

He doesn't do it in public, of course — not where any _human_ can see. But in his shop, when it's just the two of them, casually miracle-ing more space so they don't knock anything over and humming under his breath as he reorganises his books. He does it the way he does almost anything that manages to shock Crowley: without any regard to potential consequences.

"Oi," Crowley says, startling hard out of his doze when Aziraphale presents them from the ether, "what's that about?" Aziraphale slants him a look, bland as any bright thing can be, and Crowley pushes up onto his elbows from his position on Aziraphale’s sofa, dropping a foot to the floor. "I may not be that worried they're watching us, but that doesn't mean they won't start if we're advertising our presence." 

"And to whom am I supposedly advertising it?" Aziraphale asks with a pointed glance at shades (drawn now, at least the ones facing the street) and the door (suddenly locked, though it hadn't been before). Aziraphale nods resolutely at Crowley's silence. "Precisely. And it’s not as though I’m planning on doing it every day." 

"Angel—" 

"It pinches, keeping them out of sight for so long," Aziraphale says. “I’d gotten so used to it, I hadn’t realised, until we let them out last week.” 

He extends his wings a little, oblivious to how ironic it is: the flash of his feathers against the dull backdrop of the poetry section, that dizzying luminescence in the presence of thousands of words that will never come close to describing what true beauty is.

"We may as well be comfortable,” he adds when Crowley just blinks at him. “You must have noticed it too, the ache?" 

And, well. He's not wrong, though "ache" seems a stupid way to describe it. For Crowley’s money, it’s better compared to the phantom pains of lost limbs that haven’t really been lost. There’ve been a few instances where he’d have given up his fangs for the chance to take them out as a matter of course throughout the day. Just long enough to get the knots from his shoulders, just for the flex. Wings can be a heavy burden — particularly kept out of sight. 

Particularly on a demon. 

“Not really,” Crowley mutters. He slouches deeper into the cushions of the sofa once more and nudges his sunglasses higher on the bridge of his nose, wrenching his gaze from Aziraphale's left wing. The arch of it is seared into his mind — his very first shelter after so long without any — though Aziraphale’s only presented his wings once, since. Even harder to forget is how Aziraphale seemed to expect his unconscious side-step closer.

He’s just so heedlessly gracious, the wanker. It plays heaven on Crowley's self-control, not something he can claim to have a lot of on his best day. 

Then again, they've never had this much freedom before. Shouldn’t matter to him what Aziraphale does.

(Sizzling, cool, that bow of protection brushing Crowley’s left shoulder and then spreading out like the coil of curiosity in Crowley, and he wants to say _Let me see them, never stop showing me the whole and perfect of you,_ except— Except.)

Crowley listens to the quiet rustle of feathers and rasp of books for a few minutes, then says, “But yeah, keep ‘em out if you want to. Hell, take ‘em out every day, no reason to be uncomfortable. Anyway, it’sss—” He swallows and clenches his jaw. “It’s a good look on you.”

There’s a pause in Aziraphale’s shuffle around the room. When it finally resumes, Crowley releases the breath caught in his lungs and forces the heat in his face to recede. But he has a time of it getting back to the state of drowse he’d been in before.

He’s never been great at calculating the consequences of his actions, either.

* * *

Heaven is temperate; no one ever thinks to tell the humans that. To be fair, it’s not really something they ever think to ask, curious as they are about the golden roads, the visual splendor of the place. It’s not without its drawbacks, but the weather’s nice.

Unsettlingly so.

Hell, though… the heat is _all_ people talk about. The scorching agony. That part’s true enough. The fires burn eternally in the pits, steam rising from them like slime to coat the skin of unfortunate passers-by. It’s one of the few things they’re not capable of simply snapping away; it usually takes Crowley three or four showers to get rid of it. He supposes they’ve set it up like that for a reason. 

But where people get it wrong is that Hell isn’t _only_ hot. By turns, the rooms can be boiling or arctic, and every bit of unpleasantness in between. Every lick of it a different degree of punishment. 

Picturing Aziraphale down there is worse. 

Crowley hasn’t gone a single night without dreaming of it, since.

* * *

Aziraphale takes Crowley’s flip advice to heart, showcasing his wings whenever he likes. Crowley comes to anticipate it as soon as they’re alone together: the _whoosh_ of their appearance, the brilliance of their dignified fold. Always accompanied by the same pleased stretch of Aziraphale’s neck, this way and that, and the temporary increase in the sapphire throb of his pulse, just up and to the left of his tartan bowtie.

Aziraphale lets them out so often Crowley begins noticing the drift of down in stray shafts of late-afternoon sunlight around the shop, like the early fall of snow, and bits of it clinging to his jeans when he departs for the night. A small, fluffy pile grows in the drawer next to his bed — scraps of loose plumage, cashmere-soft and still aglow; it just feels wrong to discard them. (He doesn’t let himself think about why.) 

“Can’t pinch _that_ badly,” he says one evening, Aziraphale already shaking out his feathers when Crowley’s barely got the door closed behind them. “If I remember right, it took a few hundred years before I realised where the tension was coming from.” 

“So you _have_ noticed!” Aziraphale says with a smile, rummaging around in his desk. He produces two mugs and pours a healthy amount of whisky into each of them. 

Crowley shrugs, bothered for more reasons than he’s got scales. He drops into a deliberately obnoxious splay onto Aziraphale’s sofa, stretching out one leg over the cushions and hooking the other over the back — bothered again when Aziraphale merely pushes a mug into his hand and lowers into the chair opposite him. 

“Not the same, though, is it?” Crowley says. He watches Aziraphale over the rims of his glasses, searching for something, anything — he doesn’t know what. 

Resting his drink on his knee, Aziraphale seems to ponder him. But in place of an answer, he only says, “I’m meeting a new book dealer on Saturday. I don’t suppose you’d indulge me by coming along? You’re so very good at detecting dishonesty in people, and of course I’m sure he’s trustworthy, but I’d prefer to rely on your opinion—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Crowley sighs and tosses back half his whisky, ears gone hot. “Trustworthy as the rest of them, I expect.” 

He doesn’t press again. Aziraphale can be annoyingly stubborn, and Crowley may have never been all that invested in demoning, but neither has he ever liked wasting time on pointless ventures — it’s what the arrangement was about, after all. At least, in theory. 

Instead, Crowley finds himself engaging in banal activities, or activities that would be banal if he had anyone else at his side. He accompanies Aziraphale to meet his new book dealer; they go for walks in St James park. They take a drive and wind up in South Downs, and Crowley watches from a distance as Aziraphale walks barefoot on the shore. They meet for cappuccinos, and for breakfast, and for lunch.

(Safely away from the shop, safe in public. If Aziraphale wonders why Crowley’s stopped taking a midday kip on his sofa, he doesn’t ask.) 

And then, as they stroll past an outdoor concert one evening, mid-September, Aziraphale slips his hand into the crook of Crowley's arm. 

It has the effect of an anchor dropped into shallow waters. Crowley’s stomach plunges, buoys; his arm suddenly weighs about a thousand pounds; he sways in his spot for no reason he can figure. 

Aziraphale tends to be more free with his touches than the rest of his sort. Crowley’s never paid much mind to it; it doesn’t _mean_ anything. Aziraphale had already given himself up to the shameless wallow in his tactile senses by the second time they ran into each other in Egypt (memory made perfect by the recollection of it — that very first touch). Picking his way down hot rocks in sandled feet, he'd come to a stop next to Crowley on the banks of the Nile. He'd touched the jut of Crowley’s middle knuckle in greeting, and started up a conversation in the middle. 

“It’s so very hard to get off, is the thing.” He was fragrant with frankincense from the letting of newly planted trees, his nose red-tipped from the sun. He displayed sap-sticky hands, palms up and open the way Tempters knew to do, but empty of provocation — provocative enough on their own. “Everyone says so.”

“Been exploring, have you, angel?”

“I’ve already finished my assignment,” Aziraphale said with an attempt at dignity, smile breaking through in spite of it, “and wanted to see what it was like. I could miracle it away, but I’ve been looking forward to trying that bathing thing. It does smell _heavenly_ , though, don’t you think? Or, oh.”

“S’fine, I suppose,” Crowley said, squinting at the dance of light on the water, his knuckle tingling — his insides, too, twisting traitorously with beat of a heart he didn’t technically need. Aziraphale hadn’t even checked over his shoulder before approaching. 

“Crawly—” Aziraphale said contritely, as though he had more to apologise for than the way Crowley’s then-name sounded like such a _beneath_ of a thing on his tongue. 

“‘ve got a distraction to get to. Royal architect,” Crowley’d told him, and walked away. But the downward slope of Aziraphale’s lips had lingered in his mind’s eye, the sensation of Aziraphale’s fingers like a phantom on the back of his hand, still scented with fruity woodspice. 

They’ve touched before, of course they have. They touch all the time, really. Contact with Aziraphale is so commonplace at this point (even if it is mostly incidental: a brush of fingers, the press of a shoulder), Crowley should have stopped keeping tally a long time ago. But the _pressure_ of Aziraphale’s fingers digging soft into the material of his jacket, the _deliberation_ of them... that’s new. 

When Crowley can drag his eyes up, Aziraphale looks perfectly composed, save for the sunset tinge to his cheeks he sometimes gets after a decadent meal. The strains of Handel’s Water Music drift in the background.

A beat passes, Crowley caught in the smoke-blue of Aziraphale’s eyes, and then Aziraphale plays the coquette with a subtle raise of his brow and murmurs, "You look rather fetching today, Crowley. Have you missed tempting humans so badly, then?” 

Crowley forces his feet to move, setting his gaze firmly forward. He tightens his elbow around the clutch of Aziraphale’s hand. “Who says I’ve stopped?” he asks, lips twitching when Aziraphale chuckles. But he declines Aziraphale’s invitation back to his shop for a drink at the end of their walk, and avoids looking at him when he does it. 

Aziraphale frowns and releases Crowley’s arm. He wrings his hands lightly, a nervous gesture he’s had since the Garden. Crowley relaxes a bit, because things can’t be too off if Aziraphale’s pulling out old tells. But then he says, “If there’s something wrong—” and moulds his hand to the angles of Crowley’s cheek as if checking for something as common as a fever. The pad of his middle finger comes to rest over the insignia on Crowley’s temple; it throbs, painfully — sweetly — and they both still.

It’s not a thing either of their sorts do. Just the idea is almost unbearably intimate. Crowley doesn’t know how long it’s been since the script under Aziraphale's finger said something different, since it was etched in gold. Hasn’t kept track, not to the minute anyway. Not the way he does with other things. 

He flinches away. Hunches a little when a crinkle appears between Aziraphale’s eyebrows: surprise, or hurt. “No,” he manages. “Nothing wrong.”

Aziraphale studies him. That flush has brightened on his cheeks, and without seeming to realise it, he rubs his middle finger with his thumb. “I think we should perhaps talk.”

Crowley shrugs, nods. In truth, he’d listen to Aziraphale talk for eternity. He's made that point rather too clear, embarrassingly so, what with that nonsense of going off together — twice. Alpha Centauri; he doesn't know what he'd been thinking. He doesn't even know whether the Almighty has seen fit to populate any other planet in any other habitable zone, but even if They have, there’d been no reasonable expectation of the indulgences there that Aziraphale so enjoys on Earth. What in the world would they have done there, other than talk? It was a stupid idea.

“Sure. Just.” Crowley blows out a breath and glances around. He’s too exposed like this, too keyed up, the proprietary nature of Aziraphale’s touch blaring over the other whispers in his head. “Another time, yeah? Feel a bit knackered, you know how it is,” he says. “It’s been a long day.” 

“Yes, of course.” Aziraphale pauses. Tilts his head. His lips purse like a teenager on the verge of their first kiss, and Crowley takes a step back. “Have dinner with me tomorrow.” 

It’s not a question, not that Crowley could refuse him twice in a row if it were. “Yeah. We’ll do the Ritz again. My treat.” 

He doesn’t move from his spot for several minutes after Aziraphale promises to call for the time and then gets lost in the dwindling crowd. 

_Our own side_ , Aziraphale agreed softly just last month, one hand falling atop Crowley’s, resting between them on the bus. Apprehensive about what might happen or maybe euphoric about what hadn’t, fingers dry and nimble, bookworn, as they’d laced through Crowley’s. It had taken all of Crowley’s considerable focus not to rattle right out of his seat into another dimension. To fold his own fingers, scalpel-slender and gangly as the rest of him, against the back of Aziraphale’s hand, and hold on until they came to their stop. Not a thoughtless touch near the drifting reeds of a riverbank, that. Not a sterile handshake to swap back into their own earthly forms, or even this new, more personal form of torture.  
.  
Crowley doesn’t think there’s a word for what it was. 

_Our own side. Yes,_ Aziraphale had said, and it hadn’t been the concession Crowley expected.

* * *

There are a few things no demon should ever admit, Crowley knows. Certain sentiments best not dwelled upon.

 _Love_ , in particular, is supposed to be a scoff of a word, a sneer of a thought. Something you can block, ignore, get rid of with a century-long nap. Something you never, ever acknowledge, much less let escape from the forked tips of your tongue. But Crowley thinks it too often and wants too many things when Aziraphale brings his wings out — each feather as cutting as the blade of a flaming sword. It’s a torment he's not equipped to handle, and when he sees them, everything he shouldn’t say rises in him like a parted sea, dry land cracking beneath his feet. 

(They were both there that day too, their first run-in after the flood. The stands of water had already begun losing their tension, and it only took a suggestion to get the mad bastard of a Pharaoh to follow when Crowley’s pillar of fire snuffed out — the others far enough away by then and Aziraphale with them, his cotton-white curls a beacon, nearly to the other side.)

 _I love you,_ is what he wants to say, and doesn’t. Harder now than it’s ever been not to, the words a scald in his throat worse than a walk across consecrated ground. _I’m not supposed to love you, but I do._

_I love you,_ he thinks of saying, and can't. _I would live for you in a million different ways, angel, just name them, I’ll make a list. I love you so much I wish I could hate you for it._

(He doesn't, really. He wouldn't change it for anything, even if he knew how.) 

He lets the words live in his throat — half-burst and sickly sweet — for Aziraphale’s sake.

* * *

Dinner is quiet, and over before Crowley realises.

“That was lovely.” Aziraphale presses a snowy napkin to his mouth. "Thank you." 

He exhales a replete sigh that sends a shiver up the backs of Crowley’s thighs. Crowley looks away from the smudge of chocolate ganache still lingering at the corner of Aziraphale’s mouth and raises an idle hand at the waiter for the bill. 

“Sss’no problem.” He likes watching Aziraphale eat. Always has, though it does sometimes have the troubling side-effect of inducing a visceral reaction Crowley hadn’t even known was possible. Not until the night he’d seen Azirphale suck oyster juice from his fingertips and clean a thread of it from his wrist with his tongue. An effortless sort of effort, parts sprouting where there’d been none before as the as the wet length of Aziraphale’s fingers popped free of his mouth. With a candlelit glisten across the curve of his lower lip, he’d held out a halfshell in an attempt to get Crowley to try one. 

A glitch, Crowley told himself at the time, rearranging the loose, heavy folds of his toga. Even a demon, in human form, might be subject to all sorts of humiliating pitfalls. Much as he enjoyed his, these bodies were too sensory, too subject to their own weaknesses. The heat rising in Crowley’s face was a testament to that fact, sly as lava through his bloodstream. It was one of the things that made humans so prone to temptation — that lurch in the belly towards what they wanted, all magnetised desire and no common sense. 

He’d convinced himself it was the unexpected part that was the problem. Wasn’t that he hadn’t thought — hadn’t _been_ thinking — of the angel in that way for some time. Wasn’t as if he hadn’t been bored or curious enough to miracle a variety of parts and toy with them a bit, Aziraphale’s face springing to mind. They’d just never had the occasion to share a real meal before that night. Not one that would leave a slick gleam dripping from the tilting jaunt of Aziraphale’s smile, or the air tasting of ocean and citrus on the back of Crowley’s tongue.

(He hadn’t quite figured it out, then.)

Crowley clears his throat and raises his hand higher. Snaps soundlessly when the waiter takes more than a second to look over. 

“Please,” Aziraphale says, reaching out to pull Crowley’s hand down. His index finger slips into the cuff of Crowley’s shirt, lingers a moment along with his gaze, then disappears. “Let me. You barely touched a thing.”

“Never do.” Crowley’s wrist tingles; the memory of perfumed tree sap teases his nose. He pulls his hand under the table and grips his thigh, steadying himself a bit. “Drank plenty, though. And I said I’d get it last night. Besides, it’s my turn.”

“It’ll be difficult to continue scorekeeping for eternity,” Aziraphale says primly. He straightens as the waiter begins winding his way towards their table. “Besides, it doesn’t seem fair that you pay if you didn’t enjoy yourself.”

And it’s all academic, really; a miracle is a miracle, no matter who performs it. But—

“Don’t know where you got that idea from, angel,” Crowley mutters, swiping the bill from the waiter and promptly handing it back stuffed with bank notes. “I enjoyed myself. ‘Course I did.” He pushes away from the table with a frown and stands, grasping the back of Aziraphale’s chair as he rises too. “Anyway, I said it was my treat.” 

Aziraphale pauses, blinking, all long-lashed enquiry without a spot of guile. “All right. I might not turn down a lift?" 

He says it like a question and it’s Crowley’s turn to pause. The phrase tumbles around in his head for a moment, an unknown language amongst the thousands carved into the marrow of him. But at length he nods, and Aziraphale touches him again, a brief shimmer of a thing to Crowley’s forearm.

Crowley nods again, swallows. “Sure, yeah.” 

There’s a chill in the air when they get outside: the bluster of an oncoming storm, a slice of wind. The days have been getting shorter; the nights, spinning out. On their way to the car, Aziraphale’s shoulders spike near his ears and his hands disappear into his pockets. They reappear a moment later, clutching a set of leather kid-gloves. His chuckle is quiet, pleased, and the look he darts to Crowley as he tugs the gloves on is fond, but after a moment his eyes grow intent. Serious.

Crowley breaks their gaze and ushers him into the Bentley.

They’re living in the brand new days of a remade world, so Crowley shouldn't feel like they’re hurtling towards another apocalypse, but he does (he _does_ ). With a sense of foreboding that's completely unexpected after so long, he knows what's coming. 

He's still unable to keep to the speed limit.

* * *

_You go too fast for me_ , Aziraphale told him once, his first acknowledgement that he knew. How things were, all of the things Crowley couldn’t say. Angel enough not to shut him down entirely, kind to the point of agony. Friends by then, and both willing enough to tacitly admit it.

They're as different as two creatures can be — different as sampling a fine wine for the flavour and drinking for the drunk of it. Even if they weren't wholly unsuited, Aziraphale shouldn't consider him, Crowley’s always known that much. 

The problem is, he _wants_ to be considered, and recklessly deep too. Wants the raw notion of him to be fit so tight in Aziraphale that the loss of it would drip blood where feather and sinew meet bone. _He_ feels as though he’s been gushing buckets of the stuff since pulling up to the flames devouring Aziraphale’s bookshop. 

The problem is, it’s been six thousand years since he stood beside Aziraphale on the Eastern Gate, and in the time since, he’s only feared eternity once: the moment he thought Aziraphale gone, the gap between them at last too wide to be bridged.

The problem is, Crowley doesn’t know how to go any slower.

* * *

It’s raining when they arrive at the shop. Crowley finds himself following Aziraphale inside at the promise of a twenty-year-old scotch, despite his best intentions. (They're never that good, never what they should be). _They’re just wings,_ he thinks. _It’s just Aziraphale._ But he still pauses with his hand on the doorknob when he hears them come out behind him. He’s unable to move. For a moment, unable to think.

The hair on the back of his head stirs against the flap of wings, and the question falls out of his throat, thoughtlessly, tight: "What are you doing?" 

A group of humans splash through puddles on the pavement outside. Their world no different than it was a moment ago, and it's not likely to change any time soon. The door muffles their laughter.

"What I want," Aziraphale says. Crowley's heart thunders, loud as the storm outside, over how simple it sounds. 

It's _not_ as simple as all that, though. Can't be, not like he once assumed. Seems to be the furthest thing from it, actually. 

Slowly, Crowley pulls the shade over the window.

Aziraphale says, "I'd like to see yours, too." 

Crowley looks down at the sudden sting in his palms. His hands are fisted, his nails biting into them, and he thinks for a second about the Nazarene and the pooling blood from his wrists. Thinks of stepping into hellfire wearing Aziraphale's face. 

"It'sssss a bad idea, Aziraphale." 

"Why?"

For fuck's sake. Trust Aziraphale to pick now, of all times, to start asking Questions. Crowley stares at his shadow on the door shade and shakes out his wings. 

It hurts, briefly. 

“May I touch them?” Aziraphale asks.

That hurts worse. 

“Yeah,” Crowley says, voice thin and dry as any of the leatherbound parchment Aziraphale so diligently safeguards. “Sure. Why not.”

Crowley braces himself. He puts bloody palms to the door frame; he grips it tight; he drags in a breath. He studiously ignores the cock he never got rid of after dinner, hard enough at the mere thought of what’s about to happen that it’s already leaking. And he’s still not remotely ready when he feels it — Aziraphale’s hands, drifting over the curvature: the radius, the pollux, down, a hesitation to address a tweaked primary covert, a ruffle of his fingertips down the primaries, and back up.

“Lovely,” Aziraphale murmurs. “How soft.” 

Trembling, Crowley remains silent and allows Aziraphale to preen his coal-dusted wings. His hands are desperately gentle, sorting through disordered plumage, finding and smoothing barbules that have separated, positioning each feather until it sits comfortably, one good strong flex away from taking flight. 

“Even better,” Aziraphale says with satisfaction when he’s done, fingers of one hand still fit in Crowley’s feathers. 

“Angel,” Crowley chokes out. “You’ve got to stop, or—”

Aziraphale pets his free hand down the length of Crowley’s spine, a long, appreciatively indulgent stroke, and Crowley’s head thumps against the window. His wings ripple out, stretch; the tension of his body crests. He hears a small noise, and it’s from _him_ , a stifled whimper of a thing as he comes in his pants, quaking with pleasure from head to foot. Aziraphale continues stroking him, that hand in his feathers gripping, smoothing, lighting up every exposed nerve Crowley’s got and prolonging the horrifying perfection of Crowley’s climax.

“Well,” Aziraphale says, sounding breathless over the roar of white noise in Crowley’s head. “Well.” He slowly removes his hand from Crowley’s plumage, ghosting another touch at the small of Crowley’s back he steps away. It induces another throb from Crowley’s cock. Aziraphale clears his throat. “Would you like to touch mine?”

_Yes._

“It’s getting late,” Crowley grinds out, panting, “and, you know, I’m actually not all that thirsty, and my plants are at my flat, and, and I—” It's beyond hope that Aziraphale doesn’t know what just happened, but he doesn't have to be the one to pay for it, if there’s any paying to do. “—shouldn’t.” 

“Why ever not?” Aziraphale asks. “If we’re going to embark on— That is, if you want to, with me, I mean, and as we’ve not been sanctioned for the time we’ve been spending with one another since the…” There’s a moment, a shift, a rustle of feathers. Softer, voice filled with bravado and tender as a fresh bruise, Aziraphale says it again: “If you want, I mean.” 

“Fuck, angel.” Crowley blows out a breath, at a loss for any more ways to avoid it. He knocks his forehead against the shuttered glass once more for emphasis, and gives up trying. “You’ve got to know I’ve wanted—” _you, only ever you_ “—for, for a while now.”

“Well, I did think so,” Aziraphale says with hints of exasperation and pleasure, both, “and I found it rather encouraging when you began openly spending time in the shop, when you felt safe enough to sleep here. And you complimented my wings! But—”

“ _But,_ ” Crowley says. He lets go of the door frame and draws up. The inside of his pants is warm and sticky, and he wills himself dry, then folds his wings tight against his back and turns. Aziraphale’s got a small frown checked on his forehead. His wings are too bright a backdrop, and everything blurs for a moment. “You’ve already been discorporated once so far this year, maybe we shouldn’t push our—” 

Aziraphale’s frown deepens the way it does when he's about to argue, and Crowley breaks off. He closes his eyes behind his glasses, a galaxy spun open inside him, already on the verge of collapse. He doesn't want to say it. Doesn't know how to.

“I just. I can’t lose— I can’t.”

“Oh.” The light tap of Aziraphale’s Oxfords approach. “ _Oh._ Oh, _Crowley_. That’s not—”

“Don’t. Don’t say it. You don’t know what could happen.”

“All right.” It’s careful, measured. “Then I’ll say… Our existence is as ineffable as Her plans. I’ll say I believe She could have got rid of us several times over if that’s what She wanted, so it must not be; we both come from the same origins, after all, and that’s rather a lot of energy to waste. I’ll say, whatever else happens, that I have faith.”

“Because Their decisions are always so filled with reason and compassion,” Crowley says, heavy with irony. 

“I meant in you,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley opens his eyes. Aziraphale’s throat works silently; he steps closer. “I meant in the two of us.” 

_Since when?_ Crowley tries to ask, but all that comes out is, “Aziraphale.”

“You can touch my wings, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, gaze steady on him. _It’s safe. I’m here._ “If you want to, you can.” 

And Crowley isn't going to, can’t— 

_Temperate or not, Heaven is a cruel place, but Aziraphale never has been, and there may live an eternity of want in the distance between Crowley’s mouth and the drip of Aziraphale’s brine-soaked fingers, but it’s an eternity he's learned to live with. He’s resigned himself to, same way he’s come to terms with the universe of space between a sap-sticky hand and the desire to feel that hand woven through his hair. He’s resigned himself to it all, hasn’t he, all of it already and all at the same time, history in motion on a dim bus ride home, more than he ever thought to get, even if he—_

—but then his glasses are slid from his face, and Aziraphale—

— _still dreams of, **Yes, I'll go with you** , and **No, I'll never leave** , and **Our side, yes,** but whispered against the curled shell of his ear or flaming hot throat, or into his greedy, ravenous mouth. Still dreams of four deadly sins at once and never feeling more alive, all of that softness around him, hard inside him, human bodies so filled with yearning he can’t even look at them sometimes without resenting his own, everything he’s fucked up his chances to get before he even knew he might want it—_

—presses his hands to Crowley’s jaw, one on either side of it, his fingers fanned out like feathers and says, “Dearest, touch me,” and Crowley lurches nearer without thinking.

 _My dear,_ is what Aziraphale says, affecting an censiourus wrinkle of his nose when Crowley rolls his eyes. Not everyone can be his dear, but they seem to like it when he applies the term. It's those courtly Victorian manners he’s held onto since before it was even an era, and that heart of his worn so blatant on his sleeve. Both made up of finer materials than anyone else can claim. 

( _Of course, my dear,_ he said the first time, almost by accident when Crowley asked if he wanted another serving. He followed it with a skittish double-take to see if Crowley noticed, his bite of crepes wilting on silvered tines, but when Crowley only took another swallow of champagne and cleared his throat, Aziraphale's shoulders had come down easily enough. Not their first or last trip to Paris together, but likely their most memorable…)

 _My dear_ is familiar, and though Crowley’s sure he knows most of what there is to know about Aziraphale, he doesn’t know _Dearest_. It's a lover's word said like that, surprising even in the face of what just happened. He’s never heard quite that tone from Aziraphale once, not directed to anyone.

“Angel…” It hisses out of Crowley like a warning, sibilant and sharp. It’s the only one he can think of. He's stripped of his shields like this, and naked with his own want. Backed into another corner.

On the precipice of another fall.

“Dear heart,” Aziraphale says. Though Crowley’s all for progress of any sort, his gaze fast on any small step Aziraphale takes towards him, two leaps in the span of seconds — or three, or is it five, his hands are still on Crowley’s face after all, his rosebud mouth _right there_ — is unnerving; he can't bring himself to hope it's not a dream, yet can't repress a shudder from it. Aziraphale glances down, draws his brows together, and Crowley realises he’s lifted his hands and checked them before they got to their goal. A reach-for thwarted by an eternity of habit. But then Aziraphale steps closer, into the ocean of space separating them. Crowley’s hands land on the cushion of Aziraphale’s waist, slide to fit just so, clench a bit too tight. 

Aziraphale drops a hand from Crowley’s jaw, slips it down, and around the hollow twist of his ribcage, and back up. He strokes the interior of Crowley’s wings, then brings his touch around again, to rest flat against Crowley’s chest. He says, “Of course you don't have to, but…” 

Crowley pauses, his breath held in aching balance between them as he processes the quiver in Aziraphale’s voice. Uncertainty again, because Aziraphale’s never had to make the offer before — _You go too fast for me…_ — and it’s always a bit like handing a dagger to someone and lifting the blade to your throat. It’s a feeling Crowley knows too well by now, like the greasy tunnelways of the underground, yet another thing Aziraphale’s acquainted with but shouldn’t be. His unspoken question is terrible and undeserved, and Crowley’s hands itch to move over the dazzling white of his hair and wings, over any and every part of him. It occurs to him that Aziraphale’s been waiting for him to make the first move in this new world of theirs and has instead done it for him (it’s not what he likes doing, is it; you know what he likes; he likes it when you…) and so, with a shaky breath, Crowley lifts his hands from Aziraphale’s waist and slides them deep into Aziraphale’s feathers. 

“ _Ah!_ ” Aziraphale’s lashes flutter, his neck dropping back, an immediate acquiescence to sensation. His feathers send skitters of heat through Crowley’s hands, up his arms to the cage of his heart, a vibrating inner-jangle that Crowley feels everywhere. They might have the same origins, might even be made from the same stuff, but Aziraphale's wings are pure, untarnished, electric in their light. His fingers close, tugging at Crowley’s lapels, and it’s too much, to be so close after having lost him, _too fucking much_ , that wild tingle all over, the tremble of Azirphale’s feathers in Crowley’s clutch; he’s not noble and never has been, but he tried, hadn’t he? He tried, and can’t any longer, and proximity and need finally overrules fear.

He ducks into Aziraphale and Aziraphale doesn’t back away, no; he lifts his chin, his lips opening under Crowley’s, moulding to them. He takes in the spill of Crowley’s want without a single objection, without so much as a word, permission granted in his low gasp and the eager tilt of his head. His wings flex in Crowley’s hands, curling forward around Crowley’s back; his feathers brush sparks against Crowley’s own. His sigh is every oyster, every crepe, every split skin of overripe fruit and shared bottle of red, warm against Crowley’s lips. 

And all of those those earthly temptations seen played out over the length of humanity don’t compare because, this. _This_ is what a kiss is, this very thing, what the word must’ve been invented for, and the word love, too, devil knows the Almighty had a few fantastic ideas. It’s so purely, achingly good, Crowley isn’t sure how long it is before he realises they’re floating, the two of them, Aziraphale’s fingers digging tight into Crowley's shoulders, his wings still wrapped around him, and his own fluttering in harmony with his heart, just enough to take them inches off the floor. 

Then Aziraphale presses his tongue in, wicked in all those ways Crowley’s admires about him — devastating in a way he’d never imagined. He licks the forgotten taste of stardust slow into Crowley’s mouth and hums with pleasure. The vibration of it has Crowley’s hands fisting in the softness of his feathers, a shameless beg for another one of those sounds, which Aziraphale obliges with a jerk of his hips. 

“ _Oh, my,”_ Aziraphale murmurs. He draws away and Crowley chases his mouth, a blast rolling through him when Aziraphale submits to another kiss. It’s longer and deeper and better than the last; Aziraphale knows exactly what to do — of _course_ he does — and Crowley’s seen it done enough that he doesn’t think he’s making a bad show of it, not if he can judge by the noises Aziraphale is feeding him. But eventually Aziraphale pulls back again, one hand resting flat on Crowley’s sternum, and says, “Do you want…?”

Breathing hard, staring at Aziraphale’s plush, swollen mouth, Crowley nods: _Yes, I want_. 

Aziraphale pushes their hips together again. He’s gone and made himself hard, hard as Crowley’s been since before he came, and Crowley’s eyes drift shut at the slow rub of his thickened cock through their trousers. The zip in Crowley’s hands and chest skitters downwards, settles in his pelvis, bursts there sharp. 

“Yeah,” he says. Strangled, laughing, not sure why. “Let’s.”

* * *

_What would it be like?_

Crowley’s dreamed of it, the two of them, coming together. How it would look, how it might feel, the image of interlocking bodies not half of everything he wanted, really, but somehow the symbol of it, twice over. There’d been an entire decade whiled away dreaming of it, Crowley only rousing from the thud of a heart too angry and sore to consciously allow for the admission of the urge, the feeling, and then only long enough to get rid of the ache with a swift, mechanical pumps — three fingers plunged into a sopping wet cunt, or a fist wound nearly too tight around a painfully hard prick, gasping mouth pressed into the pillow when it was over.

Unsettled, unsatisfied. Searching. 

( _Go back to sleep and find him again, just a little longer, maybe a year or two; you can be enough for him there, at least_.)

* * *

The lamps flare to life and extinguish as they pass. Aziraphale’s hand is in Crowley’s, the sweep of his wing skimming Crowley’s cheek. Crowley trails a half-step behind on the way up to Aziraphale’s flat, bewildered and burning.

The flat is cluttered, a bit dusty from lack of use. But there’s a round fullness to the decor, a worn and pale sort of elegance that makes sense, knowing Aziraphale: a set of Roman coins on the wall, bound under the glass of a pine frame, a collection of coppery Saharan neolithic beads resting in a porcelain bowl on his desk. In the middle of it all Aziraphale turns to him, narrowly misses knocking over a stack of books with one wing, and kisses him.

Crowley locks a forearm around him, bows him backwards, fits a thigh between his legs. The kiss is urgent to the point of messy, but there’s a relief to it too: in the hands roaming over his back, his wings; in the press of a hard cock against the tensed muscle of his thigh; in each fevered, orange-glow touch as their mouths come together again and again. As if Aziraphale can’t think of another way to express all of the things Crowley’s gone half-mad with wanting. He fumbles open the buttons of Crowley’s shirt, pulls it lopsidedly free from his jeans, pushes his jacket back till it catches on his wings. He breaks away with a rough inhale, then comes back for more, nipping Crowley’s wet upper lip and soothing the spot with his tongue, and Crowley hisses and watches him through it: the drop of Aziraphale’s heavy lids, the flush tipping his ears.

“That, _ah_ ,” Aziraphale twists out of the kiss, gives Crowley the opportunity to skim teeth down the column of his throat, gasps, “feels— yes, rather extraordinary.” His skin is sweet, his wings glimmering in pulses, and Crowley finds a spot just above his bowtie — _there_ , where the rapid flicker of his heartbeat can be felt under his tongue — to spend some time on. “You feel wonderful.” 

The skin of Crowley’s throat goes hotter; his hips give a ridiculous jerk. He lifts his head. The bed is tall and wide at Aziraphale’s back, sumptuously draped in vanilla silks, accented with tassels the colour of Cristal.

“Bed?” Crowley mumbles, too distracted by Aziraphale’s hand slipping down to squeeze his arse to make it sound seductive. 

But it doesn’t seem to matter; dropping his head back into the ready bowl of Crowley’s palm, Aziraphale rewards him with another of those sounds that seem to mean, _good_ , and _yes,_ and _more._ So Crowley gives him more, kisses him again and harder, dizzy already with the access he’s been allotted. He weaves his fingers through the downy slip of Aziraphale’s hair, tilts his head to the side, and walks him backwards to sit him on the edge of the mattress. His cock twitches in time with the spread of Aziraphale’s fingers gripping his back, with the spread of his wings as Crowley presses him down, with the spread of his trousered thighs. 

Aziraphale props himself up with one hand behind his back and angles Crowely’s face with the other to better fit his next kiss; he hikes a leg up ‘round Crowley’s waist. And then his shirt is gone, and his trousers too, his tie, his waistcoat, everything on him that isn’t Crowley banished, and Crowley’s clothes with them. Crowley makes a small sound as their stiffened cocks meet and moves closer, the pump of his hips clumsy but instinctive, slow rolling with pleasure, a search and settle into lining up. It’s slick between them, and Crowley thinks of the shine on Aziraphale’s fingers, and of chocolate ganache at the corner of his mouth, and of every morsel ever offered when he’d been craving something else. His lungs are too tight for his gasp and he squirms, slithers, huffs too-loud into Aziraphale’s ear and hunches to move down, the back of his tongue rippling with the flavour of heat in the air, the tip of it tasting everything he can reach. 

“ _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale says. A hand buries itself in his hair — tightens, twists — as Crowley investigates one nipple and then the other on the pale landscape of Aziraphale’s body. Curling his tongue over them, beading them tight. He sneaks the soft glowing suck of a mark near the tuft of hair under one arm; he licks into the shadowed dip just above the push of Aziraphale’s belly. Aziraphale’s chest and stomach heave with the rhythm of newly-made stars, bright and shuddering. Their formation may have been in the art of the broadstrokes, Crowley remembers suddenly, but their beauty belonged to the detail work, that explosion and recoil of boundless music under the dance of Crowley’s hands — too much to contain, eager for that next push, doubt their only enemy of their fruition.

He looks down between them and falls to his knees. Aziraphale’s quick intake of breath is an expressive, guttering thing. “I thought I’d—”

Crowley nods absently. Gulps in a breath. “Do you always make it like that?” 

Under his hands, Aziraphale’s thighs, full and lightly-furred, go taut. Crowley glances up to see the telltale bob of his throat. 

“A-always have done, yes,” Aziraphale says. His piece is gorgeous, a perfect balance to the rest of him: thick and sturdy, pink, surrounded by soft white curls. The damn thing’s even got his posture. Aziraphale looks to it, then to Crowley’s face again, blinks. “But if you’d prefer—” he starts, and Crowley leans in to take it in his mouth.

And Crowley may not be able to command the actual stars anymore but it doesn’t matter because Aziraphale cries out with a breathy, ringing note, because he clutches and writhes, and Crowley can’t imagine anything better. He loosens the hinge of his jaw and softens the back of his throat; he takes Aziraphale deep, lifts back and descends, again. He breathes in the scent he knows like the curve of Aziraphale’s smile and gives himself up to the hedonism of loving the angel the way no one else can. He’s seen the favour performed thousands of time and imagined it twice as often, but the act has him wrecked inside, exhilarated: the pump of Aziraphale’s cock into his mouth, the jerking weight of it on his tongue, the hand shoved into his hair and the low affirmations tumbling from Aziraphale’s lips, an exchange of service between them real as any other form of worship. 

Aziraphale’s hand closes once more. His hips stutter and he spends, Crowley’s name a broken whimper from his mouth. Crowley swallows and swallows, sea-fresh salt pulsing into his throat, blurry with the satisfaction of desire. Aziraphale’s hand grows heavy, tugging, then relaxes in his hair.

“Dearest,” he says, and his voice is thick, and Crowley shivers, “I want—”

He breaks off with a soft groan. He’s kept himself hard, and Crowley doesn’t want to stop, but at last he lifts his head with a final tongued sliver of a lick into the warm slit of Aziraphale’s prick. Aziraphale’s back arches; his clenching fingers move to the rumpled covers beneath him, cock smearing wet against the soft rise of his stomach. 

“ _Anything,_ ” Crowley says, and without thought too, without weighing the potential response. Without shame that it sounds like begging because it is, and without fear of reprisal, because it’s Aziraphale. “ _Anything,_ angel, you’ve got to know I’ll give you whatever you want, I—”

“I know.” Legs still boneless on either side of Crowley’s shoulders, Aziraphale reaches for him with one hand. Jerkily, Crowley crawls up to him, lets himself be pulled, lets Aziraphale touch his face and run a hand down the front of his body. Aziraphale curls a gentle fist around his cock and Crowley makes a noise in the back of his throat, bucks into it, drops his forehead to Aziraphale’s cheek. Quiet against his temple, he hears, “I know you would, Crowley. I know you do.” 

Crowley’s eyes smart, but that’s easy enough to ignore. Aziraphale’s palm is slippery with oil, twisting over him, around him. His tongue traces the edge of Crowley’s ear, and then he replaces it with his teeth, with a bite, with a suck. He guides Crowley closer with that indecently sinful hand, fitting him where he wants, lifting his hips, taking him in, and—

_Oh._

They both pause. Hold.

Aziraphale’s eyes are wide, a sliver of blue around a bottomless night sky. His breath puffs soft and fast over Crowley’s lips; his chin is trembling. And even more than love, tenderness should feel like sacrilege, shouldn’t it? But instead it just feels sacred, and Crowley swallows and shakes his head; he stores the thought away to examine at another time. His arms are shaking, his legs too, his unshapely toes curling into the rug. The gripping wet heat of Aziraphale’s inner muscles squeeze his cock to the point he doesn’t know which way is up. 

He swallows, smiles, and says, “Not exploding, then, either one of us?” 

Aziraphale gives a laugh as close to a snort as one of his laughs ever gets and, lowly, says, “Just wait.” 

He strokes his hands down Crowley’s waist to his arse, pulls him deeper, lets his head fall back. Lets his wings extend again. Crowley’s never seen him so undone, his lips kiss-swollen and pink, his cheeks a fevered rose gold, his hair like a halo about him — stupidly tilting things; Crowley’d been so relieved when they’d gone out of style, but Aziraphale makes the look work — and Crowley can’t resist the urge to move any longer. He inches in until the blade-sharp jut of his hips is cushioned against Aziraphale’s arse and experimentally slides back, and in, and out. A simple, smooth glide back and forth, trying to check his own helpless reactions in favour of Aziraphale’s, fucking him carefully at first and then in earnest when Aziraphale gulps and murmurs, _More,_ ; he gives a shimmy of his hips to get the angle right when Aziraphale’s prick pulls up hard in response to a good stroke, the head of his prick coasting damp against Crowley’s skin. Aziraphale lifts his head to kiss him, slots their mouths together, and slinks his hands ‘round to Crowley’s wings. 

Inhaling his exhale, Crowley kisses him back. Starburst white flares behind his closed eyes and he opens them. It’s everything he imagined and nothing like he thought: being close to Aziraphale, with him, part of him, in a way that won’t change anything after all — because nothing can, not if—

“Dearest," Aziraphale breathes, "love me.” 

Crowley catches his tremble; Aziraphale’s eyes are caught on Crowley’s face, ankles hooked tight around Crowley’s snapping hips. He reaches down and prises one of Crowley’s hands from his thigh, brings it around to his cock — leaking, foreskin pulled tight around the flare — and shows him how he likes to be touched: a fast, lighter tug along the shaft, a curled squeeze over the crown. “Yes,” he says, eyes dropping shut, “dear fucking _god_ , yes,” and Crowley’s thrusts skip, lose rhythm, drive him in deep.

Crowley’s hand falters, resumes; the rest of him breaks apart. He comes with a gasp, his whole body with alight with it and pulsing as hard as his cock, and on his stomach feels the splash of Aziraphale’s break too, the throb of it in his fist. 

They slow, stop, both breathing hard, skin cooling. They look at each other, six millenia in a moment. 

They start again. 

This time, Crowley says the words he’s been swallowing for thousands of years; he mutters them, face pressed to Aziraphale’s wing, for another shot at the sight he’ll take to his discorporation, if it ever comes: the shuddering joy in the spread of Aziraphale’s feathers, in his gasping, angelic mouth, and the sound of holy blasphemy on his lips.

* * *

The sun rises. Sets. The system repeats, and hopefully will for a good long while. They don’t leave Aziraphale’s bed.

“Making up for lost time,” Aziraphale murmurs against the nape of his neck, maybe a week into it, gripping the tops of Crowley’s wings and keeping his thrusts shallow. Teasing. Ever the annoying academic, he breathlessly adds, “Though the concept of lost time is really only—” and Crowley gets out a muffled “Shut up, angel” into the pillow. 

“Right,” Aziraphale says in a businesslike way, and fucks him mercilessly into the mattress. 

They tire eventually, as much as they do, and Crowley sleeps a bit, sated. He half-listens to Aziraphale moving about the room, to the sound of him reading, to his soft voice ordering takeaway. 

“Come to bed with it,” Crowley mutters, and ignores his outraged, “I _will not,_ ” to doze off again. But when the food arrives, Aziraphale sheds his fussy dressing robe and does, slipping under the covers and eating propped against the mound of clean pillows that appear. Crowley peeks one eye open to watch. 

When he’s finished, he sets aside the carton with a sigh. He slides lower, rolls to his stomach, and brings his wings back out. Pushing up onto one elbow, Crowley dips to kiss the curve of Aziraphale’s shoulder, brushing his fingers over the patterned mark ribboning halfway around Aziraphale’s ribcage. Its delicate scrollwork catches the light, shimmering. 

Aziraphale says, “Yours is beautiful.” His touch light on Crowley's temple and Crowley feels the wave of his own blush before it reaches his face; he tries to scoff it off. But Aziraphale only meets his eyes and, with a deliberate lift of his chin, repeats himself. “ _Beautiful._ Your wings are, too. I’ve always thought so.”

It startles a laugh out of Crowley, soothes some of the ache. “Not like yours.”

Aziraphale lifts his eyebrows. “So?” he asks.

* * *

Demons aren’t supposed to be happy. At least, it’s not part of the job description Crowley remembers from the burnt packet shoved into his hands as he staggered out of the pit — though it’s completely possible he missed something. But when they finish making love again (and if he’s embarrassed, later, to have thought of it like that, it seems a small price to pay), Aziraphale kisses his mouth, his cheekbone, his damp hairline, and Crowley can’t think of another word for what he’s feeling.

“I should open the shop,” Aziraphale says, grimacing. “I heard a knock a few days ago, and another one this morning.”

“Planning on selling something, are you?”

Aziraphale sniffs, then ruins it by kissing him again. “Go back to sleep, demon.”

Crowley considers getting up too. But a good nap actually sounds like just the thing, and his eyelids are heavy by the time Aziraphale’s straightening his bowtie. 

“Wake me up when you’d like some company,” he says, closing his eyes when Aziraphale hums and nods. 

It’s the best, deepest sleep he’s had in a dozen years. He dreams only once, of a cottage near the beach where Aziraphale rolled up the cuffs of his fine trousers and let seafoam wash over the knobs of his bare ankles. 

He dreams of a room in the cottage, with a window overlooking a garden. The sky outside is faded and grey, the air chilly; it’s winter, maybe. But the flowers are in bloom, anyway, and the fire in the hearth lends an orange tint to everything, all of the greenery and books. The weather indoors isn’t temperate, nor extreme, and Crowley knows Aziraphale will be there when he glances over, and he is. 

Aziraphale is there in his dream, and when Crowley reaches for him, Aziraphale shakes out his wings, and he looks up into Crowley’s eyes, and he smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are lovely.  
> Also I'm on [tumblr](https://bixgirl1.tumblr.com) now, too! *waves*

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Soot and Starlight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22836358) by [semperfiona_podfic (semperfiona)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperfiona/pseuds/semperfiona_podfic)




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